The 2016 election cycle seemed to be a long cycle in my opinion.

It

started out with the primary election cycle for the Republican and

Democratic Presidential Nominees. During the primary election cycle you

must declare for the nomination and win most the delegate votes in your

specific party. The Republican Party started with 17 candidates in March of

2015 (Linshi, 2015). The Democratic Party started out with 6 nominees

(Wilson Andrews). During the primary campaign, there were debates and

rallies to try to win delegates. During this time, there was a lot of people

were making accusations of other candidates and arguments of why they

were the better candidate. It seemed to be a long drawn out fight. This

primary election went on until each partys convention. After the primaries,

each party votes on who is going to be the official nominee. After the

nominees are chosen then we have the presidential election. The presidential

election goes on usually until the first week of November. That is when

everyone gets to vote who is president. The election cycle can go if two

years before we get a president. During this cycle, each nominee raises

hundreds of millions of dollars so they can make sure they keep up with the

other nominees. Between the candidates, parties, and outside groups that

support each party the Economist Magazine estimates that there was 5

billion dollars that were raised during the election (Team, 2016). Because the

election cycles are so long nominees need to raise a lot of money to be able

to win an election and get people to vote for them.

 This is different in the British election. The Unites States President

election is set for November every four years and no party can change that.

The big difference is the British Prime Minister can create an election

whenever he feels the need to during his 5-year term (Anonymous, March ).

This allows uncertainty and people are not able to raise money during an

election cycle because they are so random. They also have elections for

everyone at once. There are so many candidates that citizens will vote for

the ideal of the party instead of one person (Anonymous, March ). I think that

there are advantages and disadvantages of each countrys political election

process.

In the United States the long election cycles cause candidates to have

to raise millions of dollars throughout the election process which allows big

corporate donors and private individuals to have more say with their

campaign dollars than the average American who cannot donate as much.

Donald Trumps Drain the swamp message drove this message. He wanted

to get rid of everyone in Washington who had interests of big campaign

donors and themselves over the American people (Kelly, 2016). Donald

Trumps message was that he was a big campaign donor so he knew how

they worked so he knew how to get rid of the corruption in the United States

government. In the U.S. Economy, government intervention plays a big role

in the growth of the economy. Government controls regulations that cost

businesses investment dollars to comply with each regulation. Businesses

must use investment dollars that cut into their total profit to comply with
these regulations. If businesses donate to the right party they could have

regulations eased which would allow them to have more profit and use less

money for investment. Donald Trumps message was that he would have

Americas interests first over business.

In the British system, you dont have to worry about long election

cycles because the Prime Minister decides when the elections will happen. I

feel that this can be better than the American election cycle because after a

long drawn out election I think the American people are just tired of the

whole process. The fighting back and forth gets drawn out and I feel that

divides us. If our election cycles where at random we wouldnt have as much

negative campaigns that attach and it might be more about the issues of the

party that you would want to vote for. It also allows less for businesses and

individuals to have a less say because they couldnt just donate to the

individual person they would want to win.

It is also a double edge sword because politicians could use the state

of the economy to issue an election. If our economy is in a recession the

president might be cautious to announce an election because his party might

have a hard time being voted into office so he might wait until the economy

pics up. Our economy always has recessions and growth and politicians

would just have had to wait until we had a period of growth to announce an

election to keep the people he wants in office. This is one positive part of our

election cycle. It is a set election cycle so the government must try to be the
best it can to before the election cycle comes to prove to the American

people that they should be voted for again.

For our economy to grow and flourish we must have an optimal mix of

government intervention and market intervention. If we start going into a

recession and we have too much government intervention it could make

things worse (Schiller, 2017). If we just let the private sector intervene too

much we could have a market failure and put us in deeper recessions. We

must make sure we have the correct balance. We must use the election

system that we currently have and use our best judgement to elect the right

people who will make sure that there is an optimal mix of market mechanism

and government intervention that it will benefit the all-American people so

we can continue to have the growth of our economy so that we can continue

to be the biggest economy in the world.